Alberta bird decline a ‘warning,’ agency says
Government urged to set regulations
EDMONTON — A new study showing a 20 per cent decline among bird species in northern Alberta should force the province to speed up long-promised rules to prevent loss of wildlife and habitat, says an environmental agency.
“There is still time to preserve biodiversity, but government has to set the rules promised in 2013,” said Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute environmental research agency.
Dyer was commenting on a report commissioned by the Canadian Oilsands Innovation Alliance, a group of oil producers who want to improve environmental performance in the oilsands.
The report is an “early warning signal” for the government about the state of some fragile species, said Dyer.
The report, covering all three oilsands areas, Peace River, Fort McMurray and Cold Lake, was written by the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute.
Dyer noted that each of the province’s regional land-use plans are supposed to contain legally binding benchmarks for acceptable losses of wildlife and landscapes.
If an oilsands project, for instance, caused the decline of a species below the benchmarks, the government can order remedial action.
Those benchmarks for the critical Lower Athabasca oilsands region were promised in 2013 but are still not complete, said Dyer.
“This report is a red flag,” said Dyer, adding that monitoring alone will not preserve biodiversity.
“The key is that what gets measured, gets managed,” said Dyer. “We haven’t seen government changing its practices and that’s the key gap now.”
The report found that longtime agriculture on private land has a bigger footprint on northern Alberta landscape than the oilsands industry or forestry on Crown land.
But while farming is static, the other two industries are faster growing — increasing land disturbance by 22 per cent since 1999.
The report also points out that reclamation efforts are not keeping up with the fast pace of disturbance by expanding mines, in situ pipelines and forestry, said Dyer.
The oilsands companies asked for the study so they could have “some scientifically sound baseline data” to guide their decisions on how best to improve environmental performance, said Nick Brown, spokesman for COSIA.
Jim Hebers, of the monitoring institute, said he was surprised at the large footprint of agriculture in the north.
The oilsands are often the focus of stories around habitat and wildlife loss, but it’s not the only industry on the landscape, he added.
While some native birds are declining, some species, such as magpies and coyotes, more adapted to the human footprint, are on the rise across the Peace River, Fort McMurray and Cold Lake oilsands areas.
The monitoring agency is run by the Universities of Calgary and Alberta, a government research agency Alberta Innovates-Technology Futures and a board of stakeholders.
The ABMI accepted the commission for a study from COSIA, one of its stakeholders, after determining the study area was scientifically sound, said Jim Hebers.
Also, COSIA has no say over how the report is written, Hebers added.
ABMI provides data but does not make recommendations for action, he stressed. Dyer says the report is based on “strong science” from ABMI.
But it must be used for action, he said.
“Albertans have made it clear they value biodiversity,” said Dyer.
Government has more direct authority to take action on Crown land, where oilsands are situated, as opposed to private farmland, he added.